#025. The Assassin Is Too Kind (2)

#025. The Assassin Is Too Kind (2)

Shoa could not die.

There was this boy, noble as a saint, who spoke of carrying on her younger brother’s will. He told her not to throw her life away for vengeance, but to live.

How could she resolve to die before such a child, before her brother’s grave?

“You are cruel. Both you, and my brother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“This means nothing. I don’t have much time left anyway.”

A twitch.

The effects wore off even before half a day had passed, and her body shuddered.

It was the cost of a ruined body, poisoned by a profound addiction.

Her ability to withstand the side effects was nearing its limit.

At the next dosage, she would likely cease to breathe, or become a cripple.

Even before that, who knew how violent the backlash from this dose would be?

“Now is the time. This might be the last chance given to me.”

“It might be the last chance for Shoa to survive, too.”

*Bang!*

A punch, unable to contain her emotions, shattered the wall.

What splintered more finely than the scattered debris was Shoa’s heart.

“What meaning is there in a life that fails to achieve vengeance? How is a life spent regretting with broken hope any different from torture?”

One need not be a prophet to foresee such a future.

Wisdom, even to a scheming assassin, would lend its vision.

But Shoa did not know.

She did not know that the boy possessed a deep wisdom beyond her comprehension.

A distant future.

He could even foresee a distant future where the world’s timelines themselves were askew.

“I will become the reason for your life.”

“…!”

“Am I… not enough?”

A sincere compassion toward Shoa.

A responsibility excessive to the point of foolishness.

A fear of rejection.

He was a boy.

A child not even half the average human lifespan of forty years.

His purity.

The request of a young child who reminded her of her brother.

It took courage to coldly refuse and turn away.

“To appear arbitrarily and twist the way I live my life as you please… you are truly a devilish child.”

Shoa’s arms drooped, devoid of strength.

The assassin could not refuse the boy’s request, the seduction of becoming his reason for living.

* * *

In the past, during his player days.

Shoa’s end was wretched.

“Why do you feel the warmth of the sun? Why can you breathe the crisp air? You who stole everything from my siblings, why can you enjoy this world without fear?”

Shua, stripped of all freedom through death.

Shoa, each moment a torment due to her doping addiction.

Shoa killed every last one of the sub-guild leader’s henchmen.

One year. Two years.

To inflict devastation that could not be repaired in such paltry time.

The crime syndicate was swept away overnight.

Adventurer parties who had ridden the sub-guild leader’s coattails received emergency subjugation requests, only to have their windpipes severed in the order they foolishly charged.

Techniques honed not on monsters, but on humans.

The murderous skills unfolding from hands they hadn’t taken or accepted, those very skills claimed their lives.

Even so, the dead adventurers’ skills were formidable.

So much so that the time the drug’s effects could barely be maintained passed.

Shoa, weakened and subdued.

Beyond the barrier of people.

Her nemesis, Gomora, her aunt, appeared before her of her own volition.

“Shoa. You foolish friend. Even if you raze the village and grind down the organization and guild’s manpower, you will only die in hopeless rage. Why did you open your eyes?”

“How many days did you keep me alive?”

“It means nothing. Everything you wanted to know, everything you wanted to protect. Your happiness was simply grinding away your life in ignorance.”

“I asked how many days you kept me alive.”

“How unsightly. The end of one who overdoses to forcibly extend the effects of doping agents. Look at your arms. Muscles breaking bone, blood flowing, swollen and flaccid like tentacles. Who will give you painkillers now? Did you so desire that pain?”

Shoa recognized the emotion in Gomora’s eyes.

Contempt.

The answer was simple.

“You didn’t keep me alive for even a single day.”

“Kill her. I can’t bear to look any longer. That thing can’t even be called human anymore.”

At Gomora’s command, the true assassins who handled the noble family’s dirty work drew their blades.

The last act of mercy from one ignorant of grace, wanting to grant a clean end with a single cut.

But the sound of tearing flesh that should have been heard only once echoed five times, defiling his ears.

“You can still move? With a body full of such pain? Truly astounding.”

“Don’t put on a show. There are many scum like you in this world, but they’re strong. You’ll weaken. I’ll make sure of it.”

Gomora’s entire force.

All the hidden manpower she had treasured.

With them gathered in one place, Shoa embarked on her final dose of doping.

“What is that unnatural strength, even without taking drugs!”

“I, I don’t know. It’s not possible with the drug I created!”

“What good is knowing nothing? That insane monster is coming to kill us! Do something, quickly!”

The apothecary’s apprentices, doped to the gills with their own concoctions, threw themselves into the fray.

But this final, desperate doping—a gamble to lose not just a month, but their entire lifespan—was beyond the control of the very apprentices who had measured the doses.

Even as his students were being torn apart, the apothecary frantically produced a hidden remedy, spraying it into the air.

“Fools. This is the *antidote*. Did you think I’d let the power gleaned from those drugs turn against me? The strength you have…ends now!”

The apothecary’s head cracked against the stone wall like a baseball hitting a bat, the impact sending it bouncing.

A testament that it wasn’t just drugs that moved her now.

Behind Shoa’s rampage lay the player’s cruel command.

[Enslavement Activated]

[Designated Target: Shoa]

[Directive – Let the pain of your addiction become your final strength.]

Her life had been nothing but pain, and as long as the pain continued, she would not lose her power.

The monster created by the apothecary’s elixirs had reached a point where she could trigger a self-hypnotic trance, recalling the drug’s effects.

The cold-blooded manipulator had simply nudged her in the right direction.

“Diego!! How long are you going to just stand there and watch!!”

“The payout doesn’t justify it.”

“I’ll double it, no, triple it!!”

Those who stood their ground were butchered; those who turned to flee were caught and killed.

The brutal slaughter only ceased when Diego, Gomorra’s strongest blade and a high-ranking adventurer, finally intervened.

━━━

You have instigated Shoa’s rampage, inflicting devastating damage upon Gomorra’s forces.

━━━

The player observed the scene from afar.

His mother and younger sister.

The one at the end of those who killed his family.

All for the downfall of Gomorra, the vice-guild leader.

That adventurer, even sensing the murderous intent in the player’s distant gaze, would become a wall to overcome in his quest for revenge… that is a tale for another time.

There is no need for what lies beyond the memory that depicts Shoa’s demise.

For this is the ‘furthest future’ that Shoa could ever reach.

* * *

The second dungeon run wasn’t half bad.

Yuzu proved to be a useful rogue.

The mine’s hidden traps.

Unstable ground.

Artificially created monster barriers.

She noticed every small, yet potentially fatal, change and warned them accordingly.

“It’s almost too easy. Can’t believe it’s the same dungeon.”

“Even so, I can’t exactly conjure up an accurate map out of thin air.”

“We cleared the first section of the mine, so how about we head back for now? I’m starting to get worried the herald might forget the way home if we go any further, nya.”

Teresa’s party, having achieved their initial goals, retraced their steps back to the village.

Ian and Anna.

Gorgor and Nina.

The inn, awaited by all, also sheltered unfamiliar strays.

One, the last surviving miner.

The other, an assassin writhing from the backlash of drug addiction.

“Speak. What exactly *are* these things?”

“It’s not Nina’s and Gorgor’s fault.”

A child incapable of sitting still for even a moment.

A boy should be holed up in a corner like a proper lad, playing with dolls.

Not constantly picking up strays, as if he were some animal.

And an assassin of Vice Guildmaster Gomorra, no less.

So doped up he can barely support his own body.

The muscles in his arms and legs twitching and bulging, then subsiding, as if a monster were crawling through his veins.

“Discard them.”

“I can’t.”

Theresa’s forehead pulsed like Shoa’s arm.

Even before her face, twisted with fury, Ian showed no fear.

Just like the hopeless past, when, as a beaten child, he never crumbled, but stood firm against her violence.

“He’s a stray that could have blood from anywhere smeared on him. The Vice Guildmaster will have more assassins to silence him.”

“I promised. I promised I’d be the reason Shoa doesn’t lose hope and keeps living. If you abandon Shoa, I’ll follow Shoa too.”

A child whose stubbornness could never be broken.

A child who wouldn’t yield to power, nor violence.

And so, a child like herself, destined for a more miserable end.

Theresa’s expression twisted even more wretchedly.

Why, this child.

Despite teaching her nothing.

Is she so much like me?

Does she mimic my folly?

“Ugh…!”

Suppressed groan.

Excruciating pain.

Yet, the assassin refusing to surrender to the torment.

Gazing down at that wretched sight, Theresa suddenly understood.

That the sight was no different than herself in the past, unable to escape despair.

‘So that’s it.’

Theresa, trapped in frustration, abandoning her life, the Theresa who sought death.

The miserable woman who, with nowhere left to run, tried to die drunk.

The adventurer who, to suppress the impulse to give up everything and become addicted to liquor and despair, inflicted even more brutal violence.

‘Was that it?’

Shoa’s stubbornness, enduring the withdrawal of his addiction without relapsing, was like her own.

Ian had discovered a woman like his mother from the alleyways he wished to escape.

To turn away, to not offer a hand there, was a proposition that simply could not exist in that child’s life.

For he was a child who had waited his whole life, hand outstretched.

Though one might tell him not to wait.

Though one might tell him not to hope.

He was not a child who would ever listen.

As Shoah, writhing in agony, barely gasped through the receding withdrawal symptoms, Theresa offered him a damp cloth.

“You are…”

“Ian’s mother.”

“…I am imposing, shamelessly so. Please, tell the boy I am sorry.”

Theresa slammed the door Shoah had only cracked open.

“I am a mother who cherishes children more than anyone.”

“…!”

“I don’t want to see a whelp crying like a baby dying in the streets. Lie still in that bed.”

Ian’s stubbornness had moved not only Shoah’s heart, but Theresa’s own.